Politics is not just a frontal battle against the other side; sometimes the biggest, bloodiest blow is being shot in the back while holding the torch of victory. The biggest mistake in analyzing the tragedy of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in 2023 is to assume that he was doomed to lose from the start.
No, “Mr. Kemal”, who united all segments of society and started a wave with his historic March for Justice, was closer than ever to winning the election. However, his victory became a nightmare for an insidious cabal that cares about their own fortunes and seats. Those who said, “If Kılıçdaroğlu wins, we will disappear” sabotaged this victory with all kinds of intrigues.
The insidious ring whispered by history scholars and mythology tells us all too familiar stories of how a leader who is about to win is stabbed in the back by the evil centers around him.
Özgür Özel, whom Mr. Kemal raised by the hand for years and made the showcase of the party, is the modern Brutus of this story. Making the most fiery speeches in the squares for Kılıçdaroğlu to win and wearing a false mask of loyalty, Özel and his team were shifting the ground beneath the leader in the back rooms. As Mr. Kemal marched to victory, they feared that he would become the sole power in the congress and state administration.
They pushed a leader who could have won into isolation step by step by pulling him out of the field on the election night, leaving perception management incomplete and breaking the motivation within the party. When the masks fell off, it became clear that the aim was not to win the election, but to make Mr. Kemal lose and seize the throne.
In Egyptian mythology, Osiris, the god who brings justice and fertility to the country, faces the insidious and evil plan of his brother Set the moment he reaches victory and power. Set cannot digest the splendor Osiris has gained. He builds an enormous chest according to his measurements and says that he will give it as a gift to the person who lies in this chest at a feast. The moment Osiris lies down in the chest, Set and his collaborators nail the lid shut and throw him into the river; then they dismember his body and scatter it all over the country.
Bülent Tezcan, Veli Ağbaba and Ali Mahir Başarır are the Set and their collaborators in this story. Mr. Kemal had achieved social consensus and opened the door to victory at the ballot box. However, this trio and the network behind them sabotaged the areas where Mr. Kemal was strongest by pretending to support him. They pacified the organizations, paralyzed the election coordination in Anatolia and created weaknesses in ballot security. They mined the paths that would lead Mr. Kemal to victory with insidious plots, trapping him in a defeat box. This diabolical plan to lose the election was completed by looting Kılıçdaroğlu's entire political legacy, like Set's followers who dismembered Osiris' body during the congress process.
Selin Sayek Böke and Secret Sabotage
For ten years, no outside force had been able to destroy the Trojan War, because Troy was strong and winning. The Achaeans could only win the war with an inside trick, the famous Trojan Horse. Had the city gates not been opened from the inside, Troy would never have fallen.
Sitting in the CHP's ivory tower, Selin Sayek Böke, the representative of the western-centered political elite, is the Trojan Horse in this story. While Kılıçdaroğlu came up with the formula to unite with the people and win, Böke and his team opened the gates of victory to the enemy from behind with their alienated, anti-social rhetoric and structural decisions that paralyzed the organizations. They strangled the hard work of the party members in the field with the insidious bureaucracy they ran from the ivory tower of the headquarters. Their aim was not to move Kılıçdaroğlu to the palace, but to collapse the possibility of his victory from within and protect the dominance of their global clique in the party.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was very close to defeating this country's misfortune and winning the election. His biggest mistake was thinking that the enemy was only on the other side and relying on the hypocritical, noisy crowd that surrounded him. There is a timeless and ancient maxim of the old religious scholars: “Do not seek justice in a crowd.” Because they know that where there is too much noise, the voice of truth is drowned out; crowds often applaud the powerful and the spoils, not justice.
Kemal Bey looked for truth, law and loyalty in the cheering crowd around him, but that crowd had gathered not to lead him to victory, but to make secret alliances behind his back and to undermine him so that he would not win.
Those who sit in their seats in the corridors of the headquarters today screaming for “change” are the same sinister crowd that yesterday sabotaged the field so that Kemal Bey would not win, and pursued evil plans so that he would lose.
While history will record Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's good intentions and naivety, it will also record those who stole the victory from his hands with insidious schemes and drowned the truth with their noise as partners in betrayal.